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Last night, February 24, 2011, we hosted a mini-symposium at the new and improved Vision & Conceptual Development Center. We had fifteen people in attendance representing a variety of professional backgrounds.
Our first speaker was Joseph Manley, MD, discussing the American Academy of Pediatrics position statement on Learning Disabilities, Dyslexia and Vision. Dr. Manley’s premise is that the AAP is ignoring peer-reviewed research and evidence-based medicine in their assertion that vision therapy is not an appropriate treatment for children with learning disabilities and dyslexia. Dr. Manley presented numerous sources who found a higher incidence of vision problems in children with dyslexia and learning disabilities.

I was the second speaker, with a talk titled Vision, Behavior, and Academics, in which I explored the documented binocular vision problems in students with inappropriate classroom behavior, and how that impacts the learning of all students.

Finally, our keynote speaker was Jean Thomas, MD. Dr. Thomas is the President of Child & Family Integrated Therapies, LLC, which is a part of Integrated Therapeutic Services for Families and Children, Inc, in Kensington, MD. Formerly on staff at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, DC, Dr. Thomas is recognized nationally and internationally for her contributions to an interdisciplinary effort to develop age-specific mental health diagnostic criteria for children aged birth through three years old. In her talk last night on Early Disruptive Disorders, Dr. Thomas emphasized the importance of the family interactions and dynamics to develop the best outcome for the troubled child.

All in all, the evening was a success, and we look forward to many future educational events for professionals, parents, and patients. To sign up for our mailing list, please click here.

There is a lot of opinion on the internet, some good, some bad, and a lot that is completely confounding. I recently came across a post on mothering.com in which the original poster describes her daughter’s success in vision therapy and the significant positive changes that have occurred in her life as a result. Great! We have patients in our office every day who tell of the improvements they see in school, work, hobbies, and many other areas of daily life. I always love hearing more.

But in this case, another mom replied that VT has only been proven effective for strabismus and convergence insufficiency.

Where does this idea come from? There is an abundance of data showing otherwise, that in fact vision therapy is an effective treatment modality for numerous other visual dysfunctions. For an incomplete yet impressive listing, see the COVD website. It is frustrating to me and the rest of the community of developmental optometrists, educators, and others who care for children that the science gets swept aside and replaced with opinion. The opinions are repeated again and again until they seem to be true.

Just last week a mother brought her son in to see me. He had numerous symptoms consistent with a binocular vision problem. Sure enough, testing showed he had convergence insufficiency. The mother was relieved to find out the reason for her son’s symptoms, but worried that her mother and others in the family would ridicule her for seeking treatment in the form of vision therapy. So opinion not based in fact may stand in the way of this boy’s academic, sports, and life success.

Dr. Len Press posted this morning about a patient with double vision from convergence insufficiency whose ophthalmologist told her that vision therapy was bogus. Yet the Convergence Insufficiency Treatment Trial was published in the Archives of Ophthalmology. Not the archives of Optometry. Biases (opinions) get in the way, even when it’s published in ophthalmology’s own literature. And these biases prevent children from getting the care they need, and result in children suffering needlessly. Which is something that should make us all mad as hell.